If the PS3 is facing doom, why isn't there a sharp spike in 360 sales?
Because you're making the same flawed assumption as millions (if not billions) of humans do for just about everything else - that there are only two sides and that one of them must "win".
It's human nature, and human laziness. The mind simplifies every situation to a binary true/false, yes/no, on/off, right/left, up/down, good/bad decision in order to keep from having to do analog comparisons requiring much deeper thought processes. So, in this case, it's Sony PS3/Microsoft Xbox360. This is an incorrect view for several reasons. First of all, Nintendo is making a strong showing in this round. There are clearly 3 (if not more!) players. Second of all, since the market we're looking at is a "luxury goods" market (you can live without video games), there's no guaranteed "winner". Everybody could just shrug and say "meh" and not buy anything, at which point Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all lose money.
IIRC, this is known as a "false dichotomy", but I'm no philosopher/psychologist, and therefore I make no guarantees about it.
What I do know for a fact is this: I'm going to buy a Wii. I am not going to buy either an Xbox360 or a PS3.
- "XServe" is a clunky name and needs to be dropped. Something SGI-inspired would improve that situation. - Plastering an SGI logo onto ultra-high-end workstations and servers would buy them more positive press than the SGI name is worth otherwise. - It gives them an excuse to use Opterons and not piss off Intel ("SGI" gear gets AMD, "Apple" gear gets Intel). - It's yet another conquest to soothe Steve's ego. - If any company can make hardware cool enough to bear the SGI logo, it's Apple. - Mac OS X is unix-y enough to replace Irix, and might pick up some instant support from companies that traditionally support SGI/Irix. - Mac OS X might absorb some of Irix's goodies (every OS has things it's better at than other OS'es).
Done right, it wouldn't be a lot different from the NeXT acquisition, though it would lack "The Steve Factor".
NES: Final Fantasy Final Fantasy 2 (j) Final Fantasy 3 (j)
Gameboy: Final Fantasy Legend Final Fantasy Legend 2 Final Fantasy Legend 3 Final Fantasy Adventure ("Seiken Denetsu" in Japan, so the Mana series is actually part of Final Fantasy)
SNES: Final Fantasy 4 (j)/2 (us) Final Fantasy 5 (j) Final Fantasy 6 (j)/3 (us) Secret Of Mana ("Seiken Denetsu 2") Seiken Denetsu 3 (j) Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest ("Final Fantasy USA" in Japan)
PSX: Final Fantasy 7 Final Fantasy 8 Final Fantasy 9 Final Fantasy Tactics Legend of Mana ("Seiken Denetsu 4") Ergheiz (ugh. Final Fantasy Fighter Super Turbo Alpha 2 perhaps... but then Capcom would sue. It's interesting that "ghei" is in the middle of the name of this pile of crap.)
PS2: Final Fantasy 10 Final Fantasy 10-2 Final Fantasy 11 Final Fantasy 12
PC: Final Fantasy 7 Final Fantasy 11
Gamecube: Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles
GBA: Sword of Mana (Remake of "Seiken Denetsu", but quite a bit different from the original)
I didn't list re-issued games or game packs (Such as the FF1/2 GBA cart or the FF Anthology on PSX), but there are a bunch of those as well. I did, however, list the multi-platform releases (FF7 and FF11). I'm also not familiar with FF Tactics 2, so I don't know what system it's for. If I had to guess, I'd say PS2.
Seriously, when people invent stuff like this and say it's 'Fool-Proof', they're basicly just sticking their tounges out at God, says "Lord, not even you could make a human so stupid, that they could screw this up!" God disagrees, and proves them wrong with horific, yet hillarious ease.
Why do I never have mod points at the right time? At least I can say "thank you." Thank you for making me laugh. I needed that.
IIRC, the "Cell" CPU is based on the PPC 4xx/5xx-series core.
No Mac has ever used a PPC chip that primitive. The original PPC Macs used 6xx-series chips.
The cell is approximately equivalent to 8 Gamecube processors all strapped into a single die and pumped to a faster clock rate. You don't want a desktop based on that.
Argh. I need to build more tubes in my brain. 4 hex digits is only 16 bits. That makes IPv6 addresses 128 bits. D'oh!
And here I went and looked and tried to do research, and all it did was screw with my head. I knew they were 128, and went and looked at my network config and somehow figured 256.
When the internet was developed in the 1980s, programmers had no idea how big it would become. They gave each address a "16-bit" number, which meant that the total number of available addresses worked out at about four billion (2 to the power of 32).
But as use grew, it became clear that the old protocol, IPv4, wasn't big enough, so a new one was written based on "32-bit numbers". That increased the number of available addresses to 340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion -- enough for the foreseeable future, Mr Kessens said.
IPv4 uses 32-bit numbers. There are four octets. Octets contain eight bits. So each address is 4 x 8 = 32 bits.
IPv6 uses 256-bit numbers broken into 32-bit chunks.
Next thing you know, this guy will be telling us they're building more tubes.
- The Bible is God's word, and therefore, contains no lies. That means we do a lot of study to figure out why certain things appear to be contradictory. This has always led to an understanding that the Bible does not contradict itself. The details do matter.
- There are minor copyist mistakes that have crept into the Bible over the centuries and milennia, but that they're not things that have greatly altered the overall meaning of the text. We've also done a lot of work to mitigate these errors by comparing multiple older versions and even archaeological evidence and texts.
- There are several major threats to the "purity" of the Bible, and these are ongoing. The most amazing of the lot has to do with God's name. It happens that the divine name (YHWH) was removed from the Hebrew scriptures (the "old testament") in about 6900 places in most translations. It used to commonly appear in 4 places in the KJV, but in recent years (within the last 100 years) has been removed even from those places. This is presumably to keep people from "taking his name in vain", but these efforts are misguided. Through careful study of numerous texts, translations, and revisions (several hundred, in fact), Jehovah's Witnesses have compiled a translation of our own. We call it the "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures". It's a modern-language translation (currently available in about 20 languages) that restores the divine name as used in the common language for the translation. In English, for example, it's rendered as "Jehovah". In Italian, "Geova". There are an additional ~200 places in the Greek scriptures (the "new testament") that got a similar treatment. The NWT is as close to a "correct" translation as we need, and it does get some updates as better translation tools and more alternative texts have become available - there have been 3 revisions since the original 1960 publishing, the latest in 1984.
Hey, no biggie. I just wanted to set the record straight. "Fundamentalists" get a lot of flak on/., and it's not all deserved.
The doctrinal basics of being a JW are all the same (we don't allow dissenters to keep close association with the organization), but our focus isn't scientific, so we only touch on a few topics that tend to stumble those that might otherwise join us. That leads to a lot of people filling in the blanks and spouting their opinions as "fact". We're (as a group) constantly warned not to do it, but it happens a lot anyway.
Thanks for not being the typical argumentative/. user. I'm sorry I jumped on you like that.
"Terrorists" aren't a power, nor are they foreign. They're just a classification of people that cause terror. This is done by causing relatively minor but very visible destruction or harm, then relying on the panicky nature of "sheeple" to take over and spread general fear that "maybe it'll happen to me too". A "power" is a country that has a standing military. "Foreign" is any country that isn't yours. So in the context of this decision the USC has made, the president (and therefore the rest of the executive branch) has the authority to carry out an unimpeded investigation into anyone who is: 1) Not a US citizen, or 2) A US citizen working in concert with any other country's government.
US citizens who aren't into the "spy scene" are in no danger from this particular law. And it's a good thing, too. We have plenty of other symptoms of a retarded government to deal with.
I only recognized a couple of names on that list, and they were both Mac journalists. Andy Ihnatko has bounced from magazine to magazine covering the Mac and has ranged from peon to editor, finally settling down as a freelancer last I heard. David Pogue has also bounced from magazine to magazine, and has become a sort of "John Dvorak of the Mac community", though admittedly with less raving lunacy. He's done a few books ("Macs for Dummies" - prompting many "yes they are" responses from the peanut gallery - among others).
These guys certainly aren't technical people in the Mac community. They're power users, yes. But technical? Hell no.
I have two computers that run 24/7. One of them is my HDTV/PVR - a Mac Mini with its standard 85W PSU. The other one is my web/database/music/whatever-I-want server. It's a Mac Mini (another 85W PSU) and an external HD (it has a ~30W PSU). The whole setup is ~205W total at peak usage. There's not a chance in hell any of those machines come close to full capacity on those PSU's.
On a slightly related note: my electricity bills range tend to fall into 3 categories: Winter usage ($100 for baseboard electric heat), Summer usage ($90 for A/C), and Spring/Fall usage ($35 for no climate control). Really, running a computer or two is a small load, especially considering that there's a refrigerator, hot water heater, and dryer running (on and off) year-round that you have to factor into that bill.
Anybody running a server with a 600W PSU all the time is just wasteful unless they're using it to make enough money to cover the costs of running that server.
It's about on par with a Jehovah's Witness trying to say that the geological evidence for an old planet was just put there by God to test our faith.
Please don't troll.
Jehovah's Witnesses don't say anything about geological evidence. It has nothing to do with their belief structure, since it's not a subject the Bible deals with. In fact, JW's aren't even one of those crack-smoking Christian faiths that claim the earth was created in 6 literal days, as they repeatedly point out that the word translated as "day" means "period of time", not the literal value of "24 hours". And according to JW's, God cannot lie. So if there's some evidence that the earth is billions of years old, then either someone else is lying about the evidence, or, more likely, the earth is billions of years old. God cannot and would not lie about anything, especially not something that trivial. If he wants to test us, then he'd do so directly and without ambiguity.
The fact is, Jehovah's Witnesses point out (often, and without letup) that nothing in the Bible contradicts anything science has conclusively established yet. Round earth? Isaiah chapter 40. Earth not sitting on the back of a turtle or something? It's in Psalms. There are more, but you should get the point by now. The only major disagreement JW's have with science is Darwinian evolution. The Bible says each animal was created "according to its kind". So nothing jumped the gap between, say, reptile and mammal, though there's no disallowment of mutations (even "evolutionary" ones). Heck, even humans "evolved" a bit according to their pre-existing genetic information. Some became darker-skinned, others lighter-skinned. Some have distinctive combinations of facial features and bone structure, others have different combinations of such. Some are tall, some are short. All according to their kind - human. It's just that human "evolution" hasn't yet caused enough differences to classify some as a different species. Birds are quite a bit less biologically complex and therefore more likely to "jump species", and they're what Darwin noticed first (finches, IIRC).
And don't try (as others have) to tell me that I don't know what Jehovah's Witnesses believe. I am one. I know exactly what we believe (and yes, we all believe the same things, or we wouldn't all be Jehovah's Witnesses).
While the end result is approximately equal, they're nothing alike. VPC is an emulator. It emulates the X86/PC platform for use on the PPC/Mac platform. VPC2k4 is a virtualization app used to run one-or-more X86/PC systems inside a host X86/PC system.
Microsoft has simply dropped their price on their virtualization product in order to compete with similar offerings from VMWare. It also happens that the price is $0.00 (the same as VMWare Player). The X86-on-PPC emulation app is unchanged and still costs about $100.00 (without a Windows license).
First of all, I don't think you're thinking that whole "right to free speech" thing through. You have the right to speak freely. That's all it means. It just means that people can't shut you up. It does not mean that they can't punish you for what you said. It's the right to freedom of speech. Not the right to say any damn thing you want and not be responsible for it. Your employer is requiring that you sign a contract holding you responsible for damage by your exercise of your right to free speech.
Similarly, your doctor requires that you sign a contract waiving the right to sue him for doing his job in the manner you expect him to. Basically, you expect him to cure what ails you then bill your insurance company. Your insurance company expects you to prove that you have a valid claim. So you, in turn, expect the doctor to tell the insurance company that your claim is valid and why. That requires him to release some of your otherwise-private information. He simply wants a guarantee that you won't sue him for doing so. You aren't waiving your rights (you don't have a right to sue private parties - it's a freedom, not a right).
Contracts cannot waive rights. Period. It's well established in contract law. The commonly-given example is that in order for you to breathe air while standing on my property, I require you to sign a contract that signs over your firstborn child to me. It's not legal. I can't make you give things like that as a contractual obligation. You have the right to keep your children until you endanger them. Your children have the right to stay with their parent(s). I can't destroy rights in a contract. Period. And neither can Sony.
Blockbuster would have the Right of First Sale if they indeed bought those items from Sony. The only way Sony could get around this is to only rent or lease those items to Blockbuster in the first place, and that would be a nightmare for both companies. Sony would have to maintain a huge supply of constantly damaged disks, and Blockbuster wouldn't be able to make that extra buck from used game sales. (They'd miss it a lot - it's 100% profit. Gravy.)
Best of all, I recall buying a game called "Unreal: Return to Pa Nali" as part of the Unreal Gold pack a few years ago.
It's funny, Mark Rein didn't hate "episodes" when they were making money for Epic...
And before the nitpickers come out of the woodwork... Yes, I know RTPN was made by Digital Extremes, not Epic. It still built off of Unreal, and it was packed into Unreal Gold, which WAS an Epic moneymaker.
When you buy software, music, movies, or other "content", you buy a shiny disk with "content" on it. You own that shiny disk and whatever is on it. You do not own the "copyright", which is the right to copy and distribute what's on that disk. You can do anything you want to with the contents of that disk, provided that you don't distribute copies of it. (And that does mean that you can copy it, as long as you keep the copies to yourself.)
The only restriction on this is that afforded by the DMCA, and that is bypassed easily enough (copy it in the analog domain). It's also simple to prove that the DMCA violates your property rights, though it's a bit more difficult to get a defendant to allow that argument to go through the court system. So copy as much as you please, but don't distribute. It's simple, really. The disk is yours, the "content" is yours. Enjoy.
And Sony can't enforce a contract that presumes to overrule the law and force the other party to waive their rights. To attempt to do so would show them just how "owned in the ass" they could get.
I believe I speak for everyone who isn't an industry shill when I say:
MOD PARENT WAY THE FUCK UP!
There is no license, not even a click-through EULA attached to this stuff. It's copyright-bound, yes, but not licensed. And I do know how stuff works in the US. I live in the US. This is the way it is. You are not licensing "content" from these companies. You are purchasing a shiny plastic disk with "content" on it, and you are given full property rights, but no copyrights. You can use, abuse, sell, cut, mark, bend, spindle, or mutilate that item however you want to, but you may not copy it with intent to distribute (sell or give, and no, "making sure someone doesn't steal the original" is not intent to distribute). You can copy it for your personal use and the use of those in your immediate social group (family, roommates, etc. - generally those living in your household at any given time).
The government would be wise to crack down on this sort of corporate abuse of general law. The Romans survived for 7 centuries, 5 of them in a fairly opressive but wealthy empire, and their main reason is that they knew not to fuck with "bread and circuses". As long as you keep people fed and entertained, they won't rise up and kick your ass. It's in the best interest of the American Empire to keep the circuses uninterrupted and relatively uncontrolled. Corporations will probably realize this fact about ten seconds too late, just as the government installs their organizational heads on a chopping block... or throws their suit-laced asses into an arena filled with lions. I'm betting on the lions - and I'll bet they're done before I finish this washtub of popcorn.
For a long time, I've thought it would be great to see a Deus Ex MMORPFPS.
You could have different servers represent different cities and areas of cities, and to change servers, you find a "train station", an "airport", or something else of that nature. All it would do is transfer your account to a different server and load you up in your new environment, ready for more action in the World of Conspiracies.
Pressure and volume with balance out with mass and temperature. Period. That's the equation, and that's all you need to know.
The "R" gas constant is a conversion factor. It represents the net error between the various measurement units of the other values (newtons, molar volume, number of moles, and kelvin). So "R" is basically a simple coefficient to make everything work when you use different units. I use the term "net error" to describe that because it's an imperfection of our measurement, not of the equation. If we would just use the right units, the equation would simplify to PV=NT (that would be when R=1 and can be safely dropped).
Most of what we call "constants" really aren't. They're conversion factors. Light speed is no different. There's always the disclaimer after a statement of the light speed "constant" in the form of "km/s" or "mi/s" or somesuch. That disclaimer tells me that light speed is not a constant. Pi is a constant. Phi is a constant. "e" (natural log e, that is) is a constant. I'm inclined to believe that the ratios between the SNF/WNF/Gravity/EM foursome are constants (but not the numbers themselves, since they're in terms of some unit or another). Everything else is a conversion factor.
In a sense, though, things like light speed are a constant, but we're not able to describe them easily without resorting to a conversion factor. I just wish we could come up with a measurement system that didn't require so many conversion factors and work from there. Yet another reason why the metric system sucks, I guess...:)
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I already have a "torchwood" device. It's a MacBook Pro.
Pr0n + hot laptop = I need salve.
If the PS3 is facing doom, why isn't there a sharp spike in 360 sales?
Because you're making the same flawed assumption as millions (if not billions) of humans do for just about everything else - that there are only two sides and that one of them must "win".
It's human nature, and human laziness. The mind simplifies every situation to a binary true/false, yes/no, on/off, right/left, up/down, good/bad decision in order to keep from having to do analog comparisons requiring much deeper thought processes. So, in this case, it's Sony PS3/Microsoft Xbox360. This is an incorrect view for several reasons. First of all, Nintendo is making a strong showing in this round. There are clearly 3 (if not more!) players. Second of all, since the market we're looking at is a "luxury goods" market (you can live without video games), there's no guaranteed "winner". Everybody could just shrug and say "meh" and not buy anything, at which point Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all lose money.
IIRC, this is known as a "false dichotomy", but I'm no philosopher/psychologist, and therefore I make no guarantees about it.
What I do know for a fact is this: I'm going to buy a Wii. I am not going to buy either an Xbox360 or a PS3.
Or the foot-shooting ability of C and the unreadability of Smalltalk.
Seriously, though, can we get a C-syntax version of it already? It's FRICKING UNREADABLE.
That is the only thing keeping me from using it. Fortunately, you can still make Java use the Cocoa libraries.
Apple should buy them. Here's why:
- "XServe" is a clunky name and needs to be dropped. Something SGI-inspired would improve that situation.
- Plastering an SGI logo onto ultra-high-end workstations and servers would buy them more positive press than the SGI name is worth otherwise.
- It gives them an excuse to use Opterons and not piss off Intel ("SGI" gear gets AMD, "Apple" gear gets Intel).
- It's yet another conquest to soothe Steve's ego.
- If any company can make hardware cool enough to bear the SGI logo, it's Apple.
- Mac OS X is unix-y enough to replace Irix, and might pick up some instant support from companies that traditionally support SGI/Irix.
- Mac OS X might absorb some of Irix's goodies (every OS has things it's better at than other OS'es).
Done right, it wouldn't be a lot different from the NeXT acquisition, though it would lack "The Steve Factor".
I'm an Apple fanboy (kinda) and I'm not going to mod you down.
I am, however, going to point out the major difference between Apple and Microsoft: Apple uses lube.
Here's the list as I know it:
NES:
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy 2 (j)
Final Fantasy 3 (j)
Gameboy:
Final Fantasy Legend
Final Fantasy Legend 2
Final Fantasy Legend 3
Final Fantasy Adventure ("Seiken Denetsu" in Japan, so the Mana series is actually part of Final Fantasy)
SNES:
Final Fantasy 4 (j)/2 (us)
Final Fantasy 5 (j)
Final Fantasy 6 (j)/3 (us)
Secret Of Mana ("Seiken Denetsu 2")
Seiken Denetsu 3 (j)
Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest ("Final Fantasy USA" in Japan)
PSX:
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8
Final Fantasy 9
Final Fantasy Tactics
Legend of Mana ("Seiken Denetsu 4")
Ergheiz (ugh. Final Fantasy Fighter Super Turbo Alpha 2 perhaps... but then Capcom would sue. It's interesting that "ghei" is in the middle of the name of this pile of crap.)
PS2:
Final Fantasy 10
Final Fantasy 10-2
Final Fantasy 11
Final Fantasy 12
PC:
Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 11
Gamecube:
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles
GBA:
Sword of Mana (Remake of "Seiken Denetsu", but quite a bit different from the original)
I didn't list re-issued games or game packs (Such as the FF1/2 GBA cart or the FF Anthology on PSX), but there are a bunch of those as well. I did, however, list the multi-platform releases (FF7 and FF11). I'm also not familiar with FF Tactics 2, so I don't know what system it's for. If I had to guess, I'd say PS2.
Seriously, when people invent stuff like this and say it's 'Fool-Proof', they're basicly just sticking their tounges out at God, says "Lord, not even you could make a human so stupid, that they could screw this up!" God disagrees, and proves them wrong with horific, yet hillarious ease.
Why do I never have mod points at the right time? At least I can say "thank you." Thank you for making me laugh. I needed that.
IIRC, the "Cell" CPU is based on the PPC 4xx/5xx-series core.
No Mac has ever used a PPC chip that primitive. The original PPC Macs used 6xx-series chips.
The cell is approximately equivalent to 8 Gamecube processors all strapped into a single die and pumped to a faster clock rate. You don't want a desktop based on that.
Argh. I need to build more tubes in my brain. 4 hex digits is only 16 bits. That makes IPv6 addresses 128 bits. D'oh!
And here I went and looked and tried to do research, and all it did was screw with my head. I knew they were 128, and went and looked at my network config and somehow figured 256.
IPv4 uses 32-bit numbers. There are four octets. Octets contain eight bits. So each address is 4 x 8 = 32 bits.
IPv6 uses 256-bit numbers broken into 32-bit chunks.
Next thing you know, this guy will be telling us they're building more tubes.
I was a bit out of line there. Perhaps more Cringley than Dvorak.
Pogue's a good writer. I'm just saying that he's not a techie at all.
Briefly, yes, probably not, and yes.
We believe that:
- God cannot lie.
- The Bible is God's word, and therefore, contains no lies. That means we do a lot of study to figure out why certain things appear to be contradictory. This has always led to an understanding that the Bible does not contradict itself. The details do matter.
- There are minor copyist mistakes that have crept into the Bible over the centuries and milennia, but that they're not things that have greatly altered the overall meaning of the text. We've also done a lot of work to mitigate these errors by comparing multiple older versions and even archaeological evidence and texts.
- There are several major threats to the "purity" of the Bible, and these are ongoing. The most amazing of the lot has to do with God's name. It happens that the divine name (YHWH) was removed from the Hebrew scriptures (the "old testament") in about 6900 places in most translations. It used to commonly appear in 4 places in the KJV, but in recent years (within the last 100 years) has been removed even from those places. This is presumably to keep people from "taking his name in vain", but these efforts are misguided. Through careful study of numerous texts, translations, and revisions (several hundred, in fact), Jehovah's Witnesses have compiled a translation of our own. We call it the "New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures". It's a modern-language translation (currently available in about 20 languages) that restores the divine name as used in the common language for the translation. In English, for example, it's rendered as "Jehovah". In Italian, "Geova". There are an additional ~200 places in the Greek scriptures (the "new testament") that got a similar treatment. The NWT is as close to a "correct" translation as we need, and it does get some updates as better translation tools and more alternative texts have become available - there have been 3 revisions since the original 1960 publishing, the latest in 1984.
Hey, no biggie. I just wanted to set the record straight. "Fundamentalists" get a lot of flak on /., and it's not all deserved.
/. user. I'm sorry I jumped on you like that.
The doctrinal basics of being a JW are all the same (we don't allow dissenters to keep close association with the organization), but our focus isn't scientific, so we only touch on a few topics that tend to stumble those that might otherwise join us. That leads to a lot of people filling in the blanks and spouting their opinions as "fact". We're (as a group) constantly warned not to do it, but it happens a lot anyway.
Thanks for not being the typical argumentative
"Terrorists" aren't a power, nor are they foreign. They're just a classification of people that cause terror. This is done by causing relatively minor but very visible destruction or harm, then relying on the panicky nature of "sheeple" to take over and spread general fear that "maybe it'll happen to me too". A "power" is a country that has a standing military. "Foreign" is any country that isn't yours. So in the context of this decision the USC has made, the president (and therefore the rest of the executive branch) has the authority to carry out an unimpeded investigation into anyone who is:
1) Not a US citizen, or
2) A US citizen working in concert with any other country's government.
US citizens who aren't into the "spy scene" are in no danger from this particular law. And it's a good thing, too. We have plenty of other symptoms of a retarded government to deal with.
I only recognized a couple of names on that list, and they were both Mac journalists. Andy Ihnatko has bounced from magazine to magazine covering the Mac and has ranged from peon to editor, finally settling down as a freelancer last I heard. David Pogue has also bounced from magazine to magazine, and has become a sort of "John Dvorak of the Mac community", though admittedly with less raving lunacy. He's done a few books ("Macs for Dummies" - prompting many "yes they are" responses from the peanut gallery - among others).
These guys certainly aren't technical people in the Mac community. They're power users, yes. But technical? Hell no.
I have two computers that run 24/7. One of them is my HDTV/PVR - a Mac Mini with its standard 85W PSU. The other one is my web/database/music/whatever-I-want server. It's a Mac Mini (another 85W PSU) and an external HD (it has a ~30W PSU). The whole setup is ~205W total at peak usage. There's not a chance in hell any of those machines come close to full capacity on those PSU's.
On a slightly related note: my electricity bills range tend to fall into 3 categories: Winter usage ($100 for baseboard electric heat), Summer usage ($90 for A/C), and Spring/Fall usage ($35 for no climate control). Really, running a computer or two is a small load, especially considering that there's a refrigerator, hot water heater, and dryer running (on and off) year-round that you have to factor into that bill.
Anybody running a server with a 600W PSU all the time is just wasteful unless they're using it to make enough money to cover the costs of running that server.
It's about on par with a Jehovah's Witness trying to say that the geological evidence for an old planet was just put there by God to test our faith.
Please don't troll.
Jehovah's Witnesses don't say anything about geological evidence. It has nothing to do with their belief structure, since it's not a subject the Bible deals with. In fact, JW's aren't even one of those crack-smoking Christian faiths that claim the earth was created in 6 literal days, as they repeatedly point out that the word translated as "day" means "period of time", not the literal value of "24 hours". And according to JW's, God cannot lie. So if there's some evidence that the earth is billions of years old, then either someone else is lying about the evidence, or, more likely, the earth is billions of years old. God cannot and would not lie about anything, especially not something that trivial. If he wants to test us, then he'd do so directly and without ambiguity.
The fact is, Jehovah's Witnesses point out (often, and without letup) that nothing in the Bible contradicts anything science has conclusively established yet. Round earth? Isaiah chapter 40. Earth not sitting on the back of a turtle or something? It's in Psalms. There are more, but you should get the point by now. The only major disagreement JW's have with science is Darwinian evolution. The Bible says each animal was created "according to its kind". So nothing jumped the gap between, say, reptile and mammal, though there's no disallowment of mutations (even "evolutionary" ones). Heck, even humans "evolved" a bit according to their pre-existing genetic information. Some became darker-skinned, others lighter-skinned. Some have distinctive combinations of facial features and bone structure, others have different combinations of such. Some are tall, some are short. All according to their kind - human. It's just that human "evolution" hasn't yet caused enough differences to classify some as a different species. Birds are quite a bit less biologically complex and therefore more likely to "jump species", and they're what Darwin noticed first (finches, IIRC).
And don't try (as others have) to tell me that I don't know what Jehovah's Witnesses believe. I am one. I know exactly what we believe (and yes, we all believe the same things, or we wouldn't all be Jehovah's Witnesses).
While the end result is approximately equal, they're nothing alike. VPC is an emulator. It emulates the X86/PC platform for use on the PPC/Mac platform. VPC2k4 is a virtualization app used to run one-or-more X86/PC systems inside a host X86/PC system.
Microsoft has simply dropped their price on their virtualization product in order to compete with similar offerings from VMWare. It also happens that the price is $0.00 (the same as VMWare Player). The X86-on-PPC emulation app is unchanged and still costs about $100.00 (without a Windows license).
First of all, I don't think you're thinking that whole "right to free speech" thing through. You have the right to speak freely. That's all it means. It just means that people can't shut you up. It does not mean that they can't punish you for what you said. It's the right to freedom of speech. Not the right to say any damn thing you want and not be responsible for it. Your employer is requiring that you sign a contract holding you responsible for damage by your exercise of your right to free speech.
Similarly, your doctor requires that you sign a contract waiving the right to sue him for doing his job in the manner you expect him to. Basically, you expect him to cure what ails you then bill your insurance company. Your insurance company expects you to prove that you have a valid claim. So you, in turn, expect the doctor to tell the insurance company that your claim is valid and why. That requires him to release some of your otherwise-private information. He simply wants a guarantee that you won't sue him for doing so. You aren't waiving your rights (you don't have a right to sue private parties - it's a freedom, not a right).
Contracts cannot waive rights. Period. It's well established in contract law. The commonly-given example is that in order for you to breathe air while standing on my property, I require you to sign a contract that signs over your firstborn child to me. It's not legal. I can't make you give things like that as a contractual obligation. You have the right to keep your children until you endanger them. Your children have the right to stay with their parent(s). I can't destroy rights in a contract. Period. And neither can Sony.
Blockbuster would have the Right of First Sale if they indeed bought those items from Sony. The only way Sony could get around this is to only rent or lease those items to Blockbuster in the first place, and that would be a nightmare for both companies. Sony would have to maintain a huge supply of constantly damaged disks, and Blockbuster wouldn't be able to make that extra buck from used game sales. (They'd miss it a lot - it's 100% profit. Gravy.)
Best of all, I recall buying a game called "Unreal: Return to Pa Nali" as part of the Unreal Gold pack a few years ago.
It's funny, Mark Rein didn't hate "episodes" when they were making money for Epic...
And before the nitpickers come out of the woodwork... Yes, I know RTPN was made by Digital Extremes, not Epic. It still built off of Unreal, and it was packed into Unreal Gold, which WAS an Epic moneymaker.
The quote you bolded is blatantly false.
When you buy software, music, movies, or other "content", you buy a shiny disk with "content" on it. You own that shiny disk and whatever is on it. You do not own the "copyright", which is the right to copy and distribute what's on that disk. You can do anything you want to with the contents of that disk, provided that you don't distribute copies of it. (And that does mean that you can copy it, as long as you keep the copies to yourself.)
The only restriction on this is that afforded by the DMCA, and that is bypassed easily enough (copy it in the analog domain). It's also simple to prove that the DMCA violates your property rights, though it's a bit more difficult to get a defendant to allow that argument to go through the court system. So copy as much as you please, but don't distribute. It's simple, really. The disk is yours, the "content" is yours. Enjoy.
And Sony can't enforce a contract that presumes to overrule the law and force the other party to waive their rights. To attempt to do so would show them just how "owned in the ass" they could get.
I believe I speak for everyone who isn't an industry shill when I say:
MOD PARENT WAY THE FUCK UP!
There is no license, not even a click-through EULA attached to this stuff. It's copyright-bound, yes, but not licensed. And I do know how stuff works in the US. I live in the US. This is the way it is. You are not licensing "content" from these companies. You are purchasing a shiny plastic disk with "content" on it, and you are given full property rights, but no copyrights. You can use, abuse, sell, cut, mark, bend, spindle, or mutilate that item however you want to, but you may not copy it with intent to distribute (sell or give, and no, "making sure someone doesn't steal the original" is not intent to distribute). You can copy it for your personal use and the use of those in your immediate social group (family, roommates, etc. - generally those living in your household at any given time).
The government would be wise to crack down on this sort of corporate abuse of general law. The Romans survived for 7 centuries, 5 of them in a fairly opressive but wealthy empire, and their main reason is that they knew not to fuck with "bread and circuses". As long as you keep people fed and entertained, they won't rise up and kick your ass. It's in the best interest of the American Empire to keep the circuses uninterrupted and relatively uncontrolled. Corporations will probably realize this fact about ten seconds too late, just as the government installs their organizational heads on a chopping block... or throws their suit-laced asses into an arena filled with lions. I'm betting on the lions - and I'll bet they're done before I finish this washtub of popcorn.
For a long time, I've thought it would be great to see a Deus Ex MMORPFPS.
You could have different servers represent different cities and areas of cities, and to change servers, you find a "train station", an "airport", or something else of that nature. All it would do is transfer your account to a different server and load you up in your new environment, ready for more action in the World of Conspiracies.
PV=NRT is an example of a "tainted" equation.
:)
Pressure and volume with balance out with mass and temperature. Period. That's the equation, and that's all you need to know.
The "R" gas constant is a conversion factor. It represents the net error between the various measurement units of the other values (newtons, molar volume, number of moles, and kelvin). So "R" is basically a simple coefficient to make everything work when you use different units. I use the term "net error" to describe that because it's an imperfection of our measurement, not of the equation. If we would just use the right units, the equation would simplify to PV=NT (that would be when R=1 and can be safely dropped).
Most of what we call "constants" really aren't. They're conversion factors. Light speed is no different. There's always the disclaimer after a statement of the light speed "constant" in the form of "km/s" or "mi/s" or somesuch. That disclaimer tells me that light speed is not a constant. Pi is a constant. Phi is a constant. "e" (natural log e, that is) is a constant. I'm inclined to believe that the ratios between the SNF/WNF/Gravity/EM foursome are constants (but not the numbers themselves, since they're in terms of some unit or another). Everything else is a conversion factor.
In a sense, though, things like light speed are a constant, but we're not able to describe them easily without resorting to a conversion factor. I just wish we could come up with a measurement system that didn't require so many conversion factors and work from there. Yet another reason why the metric system sucks, I guess...